Seraphina (8 page)

I made my way to the gate, bowed to the sundial lawn, and said the designated words of parting: “This is my garden, all in ard. I tend it faithfully; let it keep faith with me.”

I opened my eyes in my own room and stretched my stiff limbs. I poured myself some water from the ewer on the table and tossed the bolster back onto the bed. My headache had evaporated; apparently I’d solved the problem, even if I hadn’t understood it.

Orma would have some idea about this. I determined to ask him tomorrow, and that prospect soothed my worry into sleep.

My morning routine was elaborate and time-consuming, so Orma had given me a timepiece that emitted blasphemy-inducing chirps at whatever early hour I specified. I kept it on top of the bookcase in the parlor, in a basket with a few other trinkets, so that I was forced to trudge all the way in there and dig around to switch it off.

It was a good system, except when I was too exhausted to remember to set the alarm. I awoke in a blaze of panic half an hour before I was due to lead choir practice.

I yanked my arms out of the sleeves of my chemise and shoved them up through the neck hole, lowering the linen garment until it rested around my hips like a skirt. I emptied the ewer into the basin and added the contents of the kettle, which were only slightly warmed from sitting on the hearth all night. I scrubbed the scales on my arm and around my middle with a soft cloth. The scales themselves registered no temperature; the trickle-down was far too cold to be comfortable today.

Everyone else washed once a week, if that, but no one else was susceptible to scale mites or burrowing chibbets. I dried myself and rushed to the bookcase for my pot of salve. Only certain herbs emulsified in goose grease stopped my scales from itching; Orma had found a good supplier in the one dragon-friendly part of town, the neighborhood called Quighole.

I usually practiced smiling while I slathered my scales with goo, figuring that if I could smile through that, I could smile through anything. Today I really didn’t have the time.

I pulled up my chemise and wrapped a cord around the left forearm so the sleeve couldn’t fall open. I put on a kirtle, gown, and surcoat; I wore three layers at minimum, even in summer. I threw on a respectful white sash for Prince Rufus, hastily brushed my hair, and dashed into the corridor feeling less than ready to face the world.

Viridius, sprawled on his gout couch, had already started conducting the castle choir by the time I arrived, breathless, breakfast rolls in hand. He glared at me; his beetling brows were still mostly red, though the fringe of hair around his head was a shocking white. The bass line stumbled, and he barked, “
Glo-ri-a
, you gaggle of laggards! Why have your mouths stopped? Did my hand stop? Indeed, it did not!”

“Sorry I’m late,” I mumbled, but he did not deign to look at me again until the final chord had resolved.

“Better,” he told the choir before turning his baleful eye on me. “Well?”

I pretended I thought he wanted to know about yesterday’s performances. “The funeral went well, as you’ve probably already heard. Guntard accidently broke the reed of his shawm by sit—”

“I did have an extra reed,” piped up Guntard, who did double duty with the choir.

“Which you didn’t find until later, at the tavern,” quipped someone else.

Viridius silenced them all with a scowl. “The choir of idiots will desist from idiocy! Maid Dombegh, I was referring to your excuse for being late. It had better be a good one!”

I swallowed hard, repeating
This is the job I wanted!
to myself. I’d been a fan of Viridius’s music from the moment I laid eyes on his
Fantasias
, but it was hard to reconcile the composer of the transcendent
Suite Infanta
with the bullying old man on the couch.

The choristers eyed me with interest. Many had auditioned for my position; whenever Viridius scolded me, they appreciated how narrowly they had escaped this fate.

I curtsied stiffly. “I overslept. It won’t happen again.”

Viridius shook his head so fiercely his jowls waggled. “Need I underscore to any of you amateur squawkers that our Queen’s hospitality—nay, our entire nation’s worth—will be judged by the quality of our performances when Ardmagar Comonot is here?”

Several musicians laughed; Viridius quashed all merriment with a scowl. “Think that’s funny, you tone-deaf miscreants? Music is one thing dragons can’t do better than us. They wish they could; they’re fascinated; they’ve tried and tried again. They achieve technical perfection, perhaps, but there’s always something missing. You know why?”

I recited along with the rest of the chorus, though it turned my insides cold: “Dragons have no souls!”

“Exactly!” said Viridius, waving his gout-mangled fist in the air. “They cannot do this one thing—glorious, Heavensent, coming naturally to us—and it is up to us to rub their faces in it!”

The choristers gave a little “Hurrah!” before disbanding. I let them flow out around me; Viridius would expect me to stay and speak with him. Of course, seven or eight singers had pressing questions. They stood around his gout couch, fondling his ego as if he were the Pashega of Ziziba. Viridius accepted their praise as matter-of-factly as if they were handing back their choir robes.

“Seraphina!” boomed the master, turning his attention to me at last. “I heard complimentary words about your Invocation. I wish I could have been there. This infernal illness makes a prison of my very body.”

I fingered the cuff of my left sleeve, understanding him better than he imagined.

“Get the ink, maidy,” he said. “I want to cross things off the list.”

I fetched writing implements and the roster of tasks he had dictated to me when I first began working for him. There were only nine days left until General Comonot, Ardmagar of All Dragonkind, arrived; there was to be a welcoming concert and ball the first evening, followed a few days later by the Treaty Eve festivities, which had to last all night. I’d been working for two weeks, but there was plenty left to do.

I read the list aloud, item by item; he interrupted me at will. He cried, “The stage is finished! Cross it off!” and then later, “Why haven’t you spoken with the wine steward yet? Easiest job on the list! Did I become court composer through masterful procrastination? Hardly!”

We arrived at the item I’d been dreading: auditions. Viridius narrowed his watery eyes and said, “Yes, how are those going, Maid Dombegh?”

He knew perfectly well how they were going; apparently he wanted to watch me sweat. I kept my voice steady: “I had to cancel most of them due to Prince Rufus’s inconveniently timed demise—dine he with the Saints at Heaven’s table. I’ve rescheduled several for—”

“Auditions should never have been put off until the last minute!” he shouted. “I wanted the performers confirmed a month ago!”

“With respect, master, I wasn’t even hired a month ago.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” His mouth worked up and down; he stared at his bandaged hands. “Forgive me,” he said at last, his voice rough. “It is a bitter thing not to be able to do everything you are accustomed to. Die while you’re young, Seraphina. Tertius had the right idea.”

I did not know how to respond to that. I said, “It’s not as dire as it seems. Each of your many protégés will attend; the program is half filled already.”

He nodded thoughtfully at the mention of his students; the man had more protégés than most people have friends. It was nearly time for Princess Glisselda’s lesson, so I corked the ink and began hastily cleaning my pen with a rag. Viridius said, “When can you meet with my megaharmonium fellow?”

“Who?” I said, placing the pen in a box with the others.

He rolled his red-rimmed eyes. “Explain why I write you notes if you don’t read them. The designer of the megaharmonium wants to meet you.” Apparently I continued to look blank, because he spoke loudly and slowly, as if I were stupid: “The enormous instrument we’re building in the south transept of St. Gobnait’s? The me-ga-har-mo-ni-um?”

I recalled the construction I’d seen in the cathedral, but not the note, which I must have overlooked. “It’s a musical instrument? It looks like a machine.”

“It’s both!” he cried, his eyes alight with glee. “And it’s nearly finished. I funded half of it myself. It’s a fitting project for an old man on his way out of this life. A legacy. It will make a sound like nothing this world has ever heard before!”

I gaped at him; I’d glimpsed an excitable young man inside the irascible old one.

“You must meet him, my other protégé. Lars,” he proclaimed as if he were the Bishop of Gout Couch, speaking ex cathedra. “He built the Comonot Countdown Clock in the cathedral plaza, too; he’s a veritable prodigy. You would get along famously. He only comes by late, but I shall persuade him to visit at some reasonable hour. I’ll tell you when I see you this evening at the Blue Salon.”

“Not tonight, forgive me,” I said, rising and pulling my harpsichord books off one of Viridius’s cluttered shelves.

Princess Glisselda held a soiree almost every evening in the Blue Salon. I had a standing invitation to attend but had never gone, despite Viridius’s pestering and snarling at me. Being guarded and cautious all day left me exhausted by evening, and I couldn’t stay out late because I had a garden to tend and a scale-care regimen I couldn’t skip. I could tell Viridius none of that; I had pled shyness repeatedly, but still he pushed.

The old man cocked a bushy eyebrow and scratched his jowls. “You will get nowhere at court by isolating yourself, Seraphina.”

“I am exactly where I wish to be,” I said, thumbing through parchment sheets.

“You risk offending Princess Glisselda by snubbing her invitation.” He squinted at me shrewdly and added: “It’s not quite normal to be so antisocial, now is it?”

My insides tensed. I shrugged, determined to give no hint that I was susceptible to the word
normal
.

“You will come tonight,” said the old man.

“I already have plans tonight,” I said, smiling; this was why I practiced.

“Then you will come tomorrow night!” he cried, bursting with anger at me now. “The Blue Salon, nine o’clock! You will be there, or you will find yourself abruptly out of employment!”

I could not tell whether he was bluffing; I didn’t know him well enough yet. I took a shaky breath. It wouldn’t kill me to go once, for half an hour. “Forgive me, sir,” I said, inclining my head. “Of course I’ll come. I had not understood how important it was to you.”

Keeping my smile raised like a shield between us, I curtsied and quit the room.

I heard them giggling from out in the corridor, Princess Glisselda and whichever lady-in-waiting she’d dragged along with her this time. It sounded like an agemate, from the pitch of the giggle. I wondered, briefly, what a giggle concerto might sound like. We would need a chorus of—

“Is she very, very cranky?” asked the lady-in-waiting.

I froze. That question couldn’t pertain to me, surely?

“Behave!” cried the princess, her laugh like water. “I said prickly, not cranky!”